August 22, 2009

The Cave by Steve McGill

Riding through the foothills on his way home from school, Ian Pratt can’t resist going down to the cave. It’s been there as long as he can remember it, dark and foreboding, and Ian’s never quite mustered up the courage to venture inside. Ashamed of his cowardice, he loses himself in the stories of courage and adventure that he reads about in his World War I history books. Ian’s great-great-grandfather died in the war, but he left behind plenty of letters and photos to fuel Ian’s imagination. When strange things begin happening around Ian, he decides it’s time to live up to his great-great-grandfather’s legacy of courage. He finally enters the cave…and what he discovers there changes his life forever.

I was really unsure when I got this book what it was about but the synopsis drew me in.

This book was pretty good and very different, I believe there should be more historical fiction in YA so that made me pretty happy. The book was slightly weird in some aspects but overall pretty good.

One of the problems I had which I guess was pivotal in the story was that every couple of chapters we would be taken back in time to WWI to learn how a certain person died. I did not really understand that when I first started reading it but by the end it was connected. So if the book had been a little teeny bit more forthright in what the book was about that would have helped.

This book I think would actually be better for a boy but if you are interested in WWI then you will like the interesting twist this book takes!